Old Russian cuisine

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

It is no longer a secret for anyone that our entire history is falsified and some historical episodes and facts are filled with complete nonsense and nonsense, many of them are outright lies. There is no side of public life that has not been touched by the pen of the covetous from history.

The existence of a veche administration in the city of Novgorod has been documented as early as 362 (!). And if there was a city, there was trade and crafts. Russian morocco, where saffron was used as a red dye. Contrary to the established opinion, spices appeared in Russia much earlier than the West got acquainted with them. Even the names of the dishes say: “Ear with cloves was called black ear, with white pepper, and without spices, naked. And the use of spices for drinks and honey goes without saying. But in order …

Russian cuisine has always been purely national, that is, it was based on customs, not art. The best cook was the one who could use in the diet of dishes all products from harvesting from a forest, a vegetable garden, from slaughtering cattle, i.e. it was a waste-free "production". Therefore, changes in dishes were introduced imperceptibly, under one name there could be all kinds of fillers and ingredients.

In Russia, they ate mostly rye bread, it was a part of every table, and even after the formation of the monarchy, it was preferred to everyone else. The Russians even preferred it to wheat, attributing more nutritional value to it. The name “bread” meant rye itself. Sometimes, however, barley was mixed with rye flour, but this could not be a constant rule, because there was not enough barley.

After the advent of Christianity, wheat flour was used for prosphora, and at home for rolls, which were generally a delicacy for the common people on holidays - hence the proverb: “You cannot lure a roll”. The best variety of rolls was baked from cereal flour in the form of small rings - another variety was made from crushed flour, in round rolls: these rolls were called fraternal; there was a third kind, called mixed rolls: they were baked from wheat flour in half with rye.

This was done not only out of shortage, but they found a special taste in such a mixture: such rolls were served to the tsar's table. In general, breads, both rye and wheat, were prepared without salt, and they always took care that the flour was fresh.

Domostroy, a model of the owner of the XVI century, advises to bake bread mainly from flour, which is already undergoing mustiness, and teaches to give the same flour as loans to anyone who asks. Foreign chroniclers of history refer to him when characterizing the life of the peoples of Russia. And "Domostroy Sylvester" describes methods of storing and cleaning food, so he recommends using musty flour for livestock, and use only clean food for food.

Since antiquity, oatmeal made from oat flour with kvass or water has been in great use among the people, in dry form it served as the main food on long trips and campaigns, from the 15th - 16th centuries it was released to service people for food along with rye flour.

The most popular gradually in Russia were pies. This universal dish sometimes replaced bread, served as a second course, dessert and delicacy. Perhaps that is why the assortment of dishes was scarce in Russian cuisine. After all, the filling of the pies was also all meat and fish products in all types of processing or preparations, vegetables, mushrooms, fruits and berries. Therefore, their baking was different.

According to the method of baking, they were baked (fried in oil) and hearth. The hearths were always made of leavened dough, sometimes spun from leavened dough, sometimes from unleavened. For them, they used wheat flour, gritty or crushed, depending on the importance of the day when they were preparing, rye pies were also baked.

All Russian pies in the old days had an oblong shape and different sizes; large ones were called pies, small pies. They were filled with lamb, beef and hare meat, chickens or a combination of several types of meat, such as lamb and beef lard, also meat and fish together, with the addition of porridge or noodles. On holidays, they baked yarn pies with cottage cheese and eggs in milk, in cow's butter, with fish along with scrapped eggs, or with a body, as the fish dish was called, prepared in a kind of cutlets.

In the summer, pies were baked with all kinds of fish, especially with whitefish, snacks, dodoga, with only fish milk or with vyziga, in hemp oil, poppy seed or walnut oil, crushed fish was mixed with porridge or with Saracen millet. Among the fillings of pies, mushrooms are mentioned, especially with mushrooms, with poppy seeds, peas, juice, turnips, mushrooms, cabbage, in some vegetable oil, or sweet with raisins and other various berries.

Sweet cakes were baked instead of cakes on holidays. In general, pies, with the exception of sweet ones, were served with a hot one: between several types of fish soup.

Another type of pastry made from dough was a loaf - butter bread, with various methods of preparation. There was a broken loaf, which was beaten with butter in a vessel, set - in a kind of cake on milk, yatsky on a large number of eggs, a loaf with cheese, a brotherly loaf, and so on. Eggs, butter, or beef lard, cheese and milk served as an addition to the loaf, and its various types depended on how much flour to put and with what it was put and in what quantity. (prototypes of modern Italian pizzas).

Biscuits made from dough included: kurnik, a later name for pasta, stuffed with chicken, eggs, lamb with butter or beef lard. Aladi (pancakes), cauldron, cheese cakes, pancakes, brushwood, jelly. Aladyas were made from gritty flour, eggs, butter, sometimes without eggs with peanut butter and were generally served with molasses, sugar or honey.

Aladyas of huge size were called clerical aladias, because they were brought to clerk people for commemoration. A similar dish was made by the cauldron, which differed from the aladeya in that the number of eggs in it was less; it was served with molasses. Cheesecakes were prepared from cottage cheese, eggs, milk with a small amount of gritty flour.

Pancakes were made red and milk: the first from buckwheat, the second from wheat flour; milk and eggs were included in the last grade. Pancakes were not part of the Shrovetide party, as now - the symbol of the buttermonger was previously cheese pies and brushwood, - stretched dough with butter. They also baked dough cones, levashniki, baked goods, nuts: all these types were served in oil, cow, hemp, nut, poppy.

Kissels were made from oat and wheat flour and served with milk.

Porridge was prepared from cereals - oat or buckwheat, millet porridge was rare. Of the dairy dishes, they used boiled noodles with fresh, baked milk, varenets, various types of milk porridge, spongy cheese made from cottage cheese with sour cream, and sour cheese.

Meat dishes were either boiled or fried. The boiled ones were served in pieces, fish soup, brine, and under explosions; shti whitened with sour cream during cooking, and not at the table. (Author's note: “shti - judging by the descriptions, this is a universal concentrated broth, into which vegetables, cereals and other products were added as needed. This was caused by the use of a Russian stove for cooking food, they put meat in the cauldron and put it in the oven to simmer overnight, by the morning received the finished product).

The usual welding to the pieces was cabbage and chopped cabbage, fresh and sour cabbage. Buckwheat or other porridge was served with the pieces.

Ukhoi was called soup or stew. A huge number of different spices belonged to the Russian fish soup in different forms: - an ear with a clove was called a black ear, with white pepper, and without spices, bare. The brine was a kind of today's hodgepodge: meat was cooked in cucumber brine with an admixture of spices. Any kind of sauce was called zvar.

Fried meat dishes were spun, sixth, baked, pans. Lamb was the most common type of meat dish from spring to late autumn. Domostroy taught how to deal with mutton meat: having bought a whole sheep, it was necessary to peel it off and distribute parts of its meat for several days; the brisket was served on the ear or sht; the shoulder blades and kidneys were served on fried; the hooks were served under fire, the legs were stuffed with eggs, the scar with porridge, the liver was excised with onions and wrapped with a membrane, fried in a pan, the lung was cooked with shaken milk, flour and eggs, the brains were removed from the head and made into a special stew or sauce with spices, and cold jelly was prepared from thickly boiled fish soup with lamb meat, putting it on ice.

Barley cows were used for beef, so beef generally bore the name of yalovichina in the old days. Yalovits bought in the fall and killed, the meat was salted for good, and the offal, to which the lips, ears, heart, legs, liver, tongues were counted, were served for everyday food and served under jelly, under meat, with porridge, for fried. In general, Russians ate little fresh beef, and ate more salty beef.

Many kept their pigs in their yards and fed them throughout the year, and before severe frosts (October, November) they were pricked. Pork meat was salted or smoked and the ham was used for winter shti, and the head, legs, intestines, stomach were served fresh in various preparations, such as: the head under the jelly with garlic and horseradish, sausages were made from the intestines, stuffing them with a mixture of meat, buckwheat porridge, flour and eggs. Hams and ham were harvested for years.

Hares were served scented (brass), pickled (boiled in brine), and under boils, especially sweet ones. There were people who considered hares to be unclean animals, as now, but others explained that it is not a sin to eat a hare, you just need to watch so that it is not strangled during the persecution. Stoglav, echoing the old recipes (rules), forbade the sale of hares at the auction without shedding blood. The same warning was issued by the Moscow Patriarch in 1636, but nowhere is it seen that the church is armed against the use of hares for food in general. Along with hares, some shunned, or at least were wary of venison and leggings, but the meat of these animals was a luxury of princely and boyar celebrations …

Chickens were served in chickens, fish soup, brine, fried on rods, skewers, called by the way they were cooked, spiced and spun. Shchi with chicken were called rich shtami and were always whitened. Fried chicken was usually accompanied by something sour: vinegar or lemon. Smoking raffled (?) - chicken sauce with Saracen millet, raisins and various spices; smoking boneless - boneless chicken sauce, stuffed with lamb or eggs with saffron soup (!).

For sumptuous dinners, chicken navels, necks, livers and hearts were served with special dishes. Other birds used for food were ducks, geese, swans, cranes, herons, black grouse, hazel grouses, partridges, quails, and larks. Ducks - in pieces and fried, geese - sixths, stuffed with buckwheat and seasoned with beef lard, from the geese they also prepared linen (?), Which they ate in winter with horseradish and vinegar. Goose giblets, in general from birds, went to the ear or to special dishes under the bison.

Grouse, black grouse and partridge - winter dishes - were usually served: the first seasoned with milk, the others fried with plums and other fruits. At all times, swans were considered an exquisite dish: they were served under a bar with topshkas, that is, cut into slices of roll, edged in cow butter.

Swan giblets, like goose giblets, were served under a honey fire, sometimes with beef, or in pies and baked goods. There were many other game in Russia and it was cheap, but in general the Russians did not really like it and used little. Each meat had its own vegetable and spicy seasonings; so turnips went to the hare, garlic to beef and lamb, onions to pork.

When counting meat dishes, one cannot fail to mention one original dish called "hangover": cut slices of cold lamb mixed with finely chopped pickles, pickle pickle, vinegar and pepper; it was used for a hangover.

The Russian state abounded in fish, which made up ordinary food for half a year. Useful genera of fish were: salmon brought from the north from Korela, Shekhonskaya and Volga sturgeon, Volga white fish, Ladoga ladoga and syrt, Belozersk photographs and fish of all small rivers: pike perch, crucian carp, pike, perch, bream, char, piscari, ruffs, wands, crests, loaches.

According to the method of preparation, the fish was fresh, dried, dry, salted, sagging, windmill, steam, boiled, plucked, smoked. According to the customary custom to buy food stocks for the house in bulk quantities, a lot of fish was sold everywhere, cooked for use with salt.

The homely owner bought a large supply for household use and put it in the cellar, and so that it did not deteriorate, he hung it in the air, and this was called weathering: then the fish was already called sagging, and if it was well weathered, then windmill.

Since then, the fish was no longer stored in the cellar, but in the dryer in layers and rods; the layer fish was laid on the policemen attached to the walls, and the rod heap under the matting. All cities in Russia are located near rivers, so fish was the main product, and even in lean years - so the main one.

Hot fish dishes were: shti, fish soup and pickle. Fish soup was made from various fish, mainly scaly ones, as well as from fish giblets mixed with millet or cereals and with a large addition of pepper, saffron and cinnamon (!). According to the methods of cooking in the Russian table, ordinary, red, black ear, patronizing, sluggish, sweet, layered, were distinguished, in the ear they threw bags or pushers made from dough with crushed fish.

Sti was made sour with fresh and salted fish, sometimes with several varieties of fish together, often with dry fish, kind of ground into powder, with these hot dishes served with pies with fish fillings or porridge. Pickle was usually prepared from red fish: sturgeon, beluzhin and salmon. With hot meals, pies with various fish fillings and porridge were served.

From grated fish of different genera, with onions and different roots mixed together, with an admixture of cereals or millet, a dish called fish porridge was prepared, sometimes with an admixture of meat, the same porridge was put into pies. They prepared fish cutlets from a kind of fish, mixed with flour, doused with nut butter, added spices and baked: this was called a fish loaf. Fried fish was served doused with some kind of fire.

Caviar was among the usual dishes: fresh granular sturgeon and white fish was in general use, as well as pressed, bagged, Armenian caviar - irritating and wrinkled - with an admixture of caviar from other fish, which was consumed with vinegar, pepper and chopped onions. In addition to raw caviar, they also consumed caviar boiled in vinegar or poppy milk and spun. Also in use were caviar or caviar pancakes: it was whipped, after prolonged beating, caviar, with an admixture of cereal flour, and then steamed.

As fillers in pies or in addition to meat and fish, the Russians included vegetable products: they ate sauerkraut and cabbage, salted plums and lemons, soaked apples, beets with vegetable oil and vinegar, pies with peas, stuffed with vegetable substances, buckwheat and oatmeal porridge with vegetable oil, onions, oatmeal jelly, levashniki, pancakes with honey, loaves with mushrooms and millet, all kinds of boiled and fried mushrooms (buttermilk, milk mushrooms, morels, mushrooms), various pea preparations: broken peas, grated peas, loose peas, pea cheese, that is, hard-knocked crushed peas with vegetable oil, pea flour noodles, poppy milk cottage cheese, horseradish, radish and various vegetable preparations: vegetable broth and coliva (?).

Russian delicacies consisted of fresh fruit or cooked in molasses, with honey and sugar. These fruits were partly southern (native), partly imported. The owners used apples and pears in molasses and kvass, that is, they put them in barrels and poured them with molasses, then closed them, but not tightly so that the “sour spirit would come out,” or, taking away fresh apples, cut holes in them and poured the molasses into them.

Fruit drink was made from berries, used with water, lingonberry water was made from lingonberry. There was a common delicacy called levashi: it was made from raspberries, blueberries, currants and strawberries. The berries were first boiled, then rubbed through a sieve and then boiled again, this time with molasses, stirring thickly during boiling, then they put this thick mixture on a board, previously oiled, and put in the sun or against fire; when it dries up, they roll it up in tubes.

Another delicacy was a marshmallow made from apples. Apples were put in a well-fed and steamed, then rubbed through a sieve, put molasses and steamed again, mixed, beat, crumpled, then laid them on a board and let them rise up, finally, put them in copper ones, made tinned apples, letting them sour, and threw them down … Pastila was also made from other fruits and berries, for example, from viburnum.

Radish in molasses was prepared in this way: first, the rare root was painted into small slices, blown up on knitting needles so that the slice did not collide with another slice, and dried in the sun or in ovens, after the bread was baked; when there was no moisture left in the plant, they pounded it, sifted it on a sieve, meanwhile they boiled molasses in a pot and, boiling it, poured it into rare flour, adding various spices there: pepper, nutmeg, cloves, and, having sealed the pot, put it in the oven on two days and two nights. This mixture should be thick, like pressed caviar and was called mazyunya; the same mash was prepared in a similar way from dry cherries.

From watermelons, which were brought to Russia from the lower reaches of the Volga, we prepared such a delicacy: cutting a watermelon two fingers from the bark into pieces no thicker than paper, put it in lye for a day, meanwhile boiled molasses with pepper, ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg and then put there watermelons. Melons were prepared in a similar way.

The Russians cooked imported fruits in sugar and molasses: raisins with branches, cinnamon, figs, ginger and various spices. An ordinary Russian delicacy was a boil made from wine berries, raisins, dates, cherries and other fruits with honey, sugar or molasses, with a lot of cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, saffron, ginger and other spices, one kind of boiled was called honey (honey), the other leavened.

All kinds of gingerbread or gingerbread - old national cookies should also be attributed to delicacies.

The drinks used by Russians in the old days were kvass, fruit drink, beer, honey. Kvass served as the main drink of the whole people. Kvass breweries and kvass makers selling kvass could be found everywhere in the villages. Kvass was of different types: in addition to the simple, so-called wheat-based, made from barley or rye malt, there were honey and berry kvass. Honey was prepared from honey, sifted in water, strained, with an admixture of kalach instead of yeast, or fermented milk. This solution stood for some time with a roll, then it was poured into barrels. Its quality depended on the type and quantity of honey.

Berry kvass was made in the same way from honey and water with the addition of berries, cherries, bird cherry, raspberries and other berries. (Kvassnik is a large baked malt cake that serves as a leaven in the production of kvass).

The original and best Russian drink was honey; all travelers who visited Muscovy unanimously recognized the dignity of our honey and sent it to distant countries. The honeys were boiled and put on; the first were boiled, the second just poured. In addition, according to the method of preparation and different spices, honeys had names: simple honey, unleavened honey, white, red honey, obarny honey, boyar honey, berry honey.

Honey, called obarny honey, was prepared as follows: they spread the honeycomb with warm water, strained it through a fine sieve so that the honey was separated from the bottom, then put hops there, putting half a bucket of hops on a pound of honey, and boiled it in a cauldron, constantly removing the foam with a sieve, when this liquid was boiled down to the point that only half of it remained in the boiler, then they poured it out of the boiler into a measuring tank and cooled it not in extreme cold, and threw a piece of rye bread grated with molasses and yeast into it, allowed the liquid to sour, not allowing so that it completely oxidizes, at last they poured it into barrels.

Boyar honey differed from obarny honey in that when the honey was dispensed, honeycomb was taken six times more than water; he was a pussycat in the measuring tanks for a week, then he was poured into a barrel, where he stood for another week with yeast; then it was drained from the yeast, steamed with molasses and finally poured into another barrel. Berry boiled honey was prepared in this way: the berries were boiled with honey until they boiled completely (boiled down), then this mixture was removed from the fire; it was allowed to settle, then it was strained, poured into honey, already boiled with yeast and hops, and sealed.

The poured honeys were prepared like kvass, but with yeast or hops and therefore differed from kvass in their hopping properties. Putting berry honey was a refreshing and pleasant drink. It was usually made in the summer from raspberries, currants, cherries, apples, etc.

Fresh ripe berries were put in a bowl, poured with water (probably boiled) and allowed to stand until the water took on the taste and color of the berries (two or three days), then they drained the water from the berries and put pure honey separated from the wax into it, observing that a mug of honey came out for two or three waters, in accordance with the desire to give the drink more or less sweetness, then they threw in there several pieces of baked rind, yeast and hops, and when this mixture began to sour, then they took out the bread away so that it would not took on a bread-like taste, yeast honey was left for five to eight days in a warm place, and then removed and put in a cold place. Some threw spices there: cloves, cardamom, ginger. The honey that was put up was contained in tarred barrels and was sometimes so strong that it knocked him off his feet.

Birch sap or birch sap, extracted from birches in April, belonged to the category of soft drinks.

The beer, probably later, was made from barley, oats, rye and wheat. It was brewed in state-owned breweries at taverns, and wealthy people, who had the permission to prepare drinks for themselves, made it for household use in their yards and kept it in glaciers under snow and ice. Russian beer, according to foreigners, was tasty, but muddy. Some owners steamed it with molasses, that is, the finished beer was decanted from the yeast and poured into another barrel, then, taking a bucket of this beer, adding molasses there, they boiled it to boiling water, then they caught a cold and poured back into the barrel, and sometimes added berry mixtures there. The latter kind of beer was called counterfeit beer.

(Since ancient times, a tavern meant an inn. Tsar Ivan IV first opened a tavern with intoxicating drinks for his guardsmen on the Balguch in Moscow, which caused discontent among the people. Under Alexei Mikhailovich, this phenomenon had already appeared in every city, and then drinking began people).

An old Russian proverb about drunkenness goes like this:

“I pour only three cups for the wise - one for health, which they will drink first, the second for love and pleasure, the third for sleep, the wise who have tasted it will return home.

The fourth cup is not ours, but it is characteristic of insolence, the fifth arouses noise, and the sixth is fury and fights."

Here is what foreigners wrote about Russian cuisine:

“The Russian cooking art consisted of many dishes, but the impurity and even more garlic and onion smell made them almost inedible, moreover, almost all the dishes were seasoned with hemp oil or spoiled cow oil. Foreigners say that the Russians' only good food was cold (Meyerbeer, p. 37).

Until the end of the seventeenth century, Russians did not know any other vegetable garden, except for simple cabbage, garlic, onions, cucumbers, radishes, beetroots and melons. Our ancestors did not plant or eat salad; Bruin says that in his time the Russians began to breed "salleri", but they did not know asparagus and artichokes, despite the fact that the first one grew wildly in their fields. The first artichokes were brought to St. Petersburg from Holland in 1715. Russians in the old days ate neither veal, nor hare, nor pigeon meat, nor crayfish, and generally nothing that died by itself (Reitenfels, 198); they also considered all animals that were killed by women unclean."

“The Russians didn’t know how to salt fish well, just as they don’t know how to do it now: they smelled it; but the common people, as foreigners remarked, not only did not turn away from it, but still preferred it fresh. Taking a fish in his hands, the Russian brought it to his nose and tried: does it stink enough, and if there was little stench in it, then he put it down and said: it’s not ripe yet!”

How do you like this characteristic, which is very far from reality, which can be easily found in old editions and in archives:

“During the table in 1671, the patriarch offered the great sovereign“brownie food in three articles, four items each: the first article: live steam pike, live steam bream, live steam sterlet, white fish back; second article: pancake, live fish body, live fish pike ear, live fish body pie; third article: live pike head, half live sturgeon head, beluga teshka; they brought drinks: Renskoe, yes Romana, yes bastr."

But what about the father himself?

So, “on Wednesday, the first weeks of Great Lent (1667), food was prepared for the Holy Patriarch: even bread, paposhnik, sweet broth with millet and berries, with pepper and saffron, horseradish, croutons, cold stamped cabbage, cold peas, cold zobanets cranberry with honey, grated porridge with poppy juice and so on. The same day it was sent to the patriarch: a cup of Romaneya, a cup of Renskago, a cup of Malvasia, a large loaf of bread, a strip of watermelon, a pot of molasses with inbar, a pot of mazuli with inbar, three cones of kernels.

This is the reality, and the same throughout our history … But still we will continue.

In old Russia, drinks were stored in glaciers or cellars, of which there were sometimes several at home. They were made with different departments, in which the barrels were placed, in ice in the summer. The barrels were pregnant or semi-pregnant. The capacity of both was not always and not everywhere the same, in general, you can put a pregnant barrel at thirty, and a semi-pregnant one in fifteen buckets.

Domostroy Silversta lists food stocks:

“And in the cellar and on the glaciers, and in the cellar, bread and kolachi, cheeses, eggs, scored, and onions, garlic and all kinds of meat, fresh and corned beef, and fresh and salted fish, and unleavened honey, and boiled food - meat, and fish jelly, and all kinds of foodstuffs (edible) n cucumbers, and salted and fresh cabbage, and turnips, and all kinds of vegetables, and mushrooms, n caviar, and putted dew, and fruit juice, cherry molasses, and raspberry, and apples, and pears, and melons, and watermelons in molasses, and plums, and lemons, levanniki and pastilles, apple kvass and lingonberry water. And all sorts of honey, and beer - fried and simple, etc..

A dozen hams and fresh meat, dried and corned beef, all kinds of fish, and salting cabbage and plums in barrels, barrels of lemons (!), Pickled apples and all kinds of berries, everyone loved salty for good, and not only used it, as already mentioned, meat and fish are more salty, but different vegetables and fruits were also seasoned with salt and vinegar: cucumbers, plums, apples, pears, cherries. Household owners always had several vessels with such pickles, pumped by stones and carved into ice.

Pepper, mustard and vinegar were always placed on the table as a necessity for dinner, and each guest took as much as he wanted. The Russians loved to add spicy seasonings to all kinds of food, especially onions, "garlic" and saffron. Due to the large consumption of garlic, the Russians, according to the remarks of foreigners, carried an unpleasant smell with them. The foreigners confessed that they could not eat the stinking Russian fish soup, which sometimes contained only garlic besides fish and water.

Here it is necessary to correct modern history, which hides the use of Russian spices, in order to erase from Russian history ancient trade, trade relations not only with Persia, but also with India.

Among the spices used by our ancestors, there was one more - Hing, or in modern terms - asafoetida. It is still very popular in India, whose chefs say that after the application of asafoetida, the body can even digest iron nails. This is certainly exaggerated, but this spice normalizes the digestive tract and removes all evil from the body.

Asafoetida was in great use in ancient Russia and it has a very persistent smell of rotten garlic. So we should be grateful to our ancestors who have used these seasonings for many centuries, leaving us, somewhere at the genome level, beautiful stomachs, which makes us different from the inhabitants of Europe.

Having deleted these spices from history, we have lost its use in modern times, although the old inhabitants of Central Asia still use it in some places and it is still growing throughout Central Asia.

On the site: "Nature knows" you can get acquainted with this seasoning: